Supreme Court Orders CBI probe into suspicious death of 19-year-old medical student in UP

The Supreme Court has ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the death of a 19-year-old medical student in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2017. According to a PTI report, the student had allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan in her dorm room on September 5, 2017. However, due to conflicting findings in the investigation reports by the UP police and the Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department (CB-CID), Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sudhanshu Dhulia have called for the CBI to intervene.

“A young girl child has died an unnatural death while pursuing medical studies and two investigating agencies have given reports, one in the form of charge sheet arraigning two individuals as accused and the other filing closure report,” said the bench.

The bench continued further to add, “In view of the fact that there appears to be a contradiction in the two reports filed by the two investigating agencies and also considering the nature of these cases, we are of the opinion that further investigation ought to be undertaken by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the two investigating agencies shall assist the CBI in this regard”

The petition was filed by the father of the student who claimed that his daughter died an unnatural death and not suicide. He also highlighted that other students at the institution met the same fate since 2002 and hence, require a proper investigation. A First Information Report (FIR) was lodged by the father on September 11, 2017. 

As per the PTI report, the deceased student, Ananya Dixit, was a first-year student at Shri Ram Murti Smarak Institute of Medical Sciences, Bareilly in 2017. Her roommates had informed the police that she seemed stressed in the days leading up to the incident and was also absent from college due to illness. The chargesheet submitted by the UP police on October 30, 2018, charged two people under Sections 306 (abetment of suicide) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code of 1860. However, later, when the case was transferred to CB-CID, they submitted a closure report under Section 173(8) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.